Leaves are Falling all Around....

Fall is one of my favorite seasons. I like summer the best because of the easy going-ness in the air, but I love the beauty of fall. I love the anticipation of the holidays and the feeling of everyone getting ready to hunker down and be cozy. Fall brings some challenges with it, however. At least if you live in my house.

I have a big yard. A big yard with 10 large, full-grown trees around the perimeter in the back and 4 large trees in the front. I love my yard. There is more than enough space for the kids to play and have their adventures. We've hosted entire ward activities in our yard. We've had countless numbers of barbeques in our yard with friends. It's a good yard. In the fall, however, it changes from this wonderful, magical place into a large piece of land inundated with leaves.

As we speak, there are roughly 20 piles of leaves (each big enough to hide all of my children in) sitting in the back waiting to be bagged. This is only one side of the backyard. This is after already being raked once. This is with 5 of the trees still needing to lose their leaves. *sigh*

The front yard has already been raked and bagged 3 times. We still have 2 trees that have yet to lose their leaves. The first time I raked the front, none of our trees had even shed their leaves yet! We simply had leaves from all our surrounding neighbors' trees. And so the story goes...

Last year, since I had just had Little Man, we ended up paying a lot of kids to rake and bag our yard once it had gotten to the point of ridiculous. The front yard alone yielded 19 bags of mulched leaves. It's a tempting idea to do that again. But I can't justify it. I'm perfectly capable of raking my own leaves. And the boys like jumping in them, so watching them have so much fun makes it go a little faster.

I think the area we live in is beautiful in the fall. There are so many trees and the colors are so vivid. Here is a picture of my favorite tree:

It is in our front yard next to our driveway. It turns the most gorgeous red in the fall. The kids love climbing this tree. I {heart} this tree.

We have one almost as vivid in the back. It loses its leaves quickly after it changes, though, so we don't get to enjoy it as long. But it makes a very pretty carpet:

The trees lining the very back turn a flaming gold color. Except for the oak. All the leaves on it just kind of shrivel up and fall off. (That just made me think of a movie line...anyone?) Oak is probably my least favorite tree. It's good for furniture, but other than that, it drops acorns and has ugly leaves. And it's not even that pretty of a tree to look at when it has all its leaves.

Nonetheless, I am grateful for our trees. We are blessed to have them. If you ever feel the great urge to rake or jump in leaves, you'll know where to go.